1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a culture apparatus and a method of replacing a culture medium, and more particularly, to a culture apparatus and a method of replacing a culture medium capable of continuously culturing cells or biomaterials.
2. Description of the Related Art
The demand for a biomedical apparatus and biotechnology for rapidly diagnosing various human diseases has recently increased. Therefore, the development for an experimentation apparatus and device capable of rapidly providing diagnostic results for a specific disease, tests for which have required a long period of time in a hospital or a research laboratory in the past, has been actively undertaken.
Meanwhile, in order to develop new medicines and to determine the experimental stability thereof, it is necessary to culture a cell. Cell culturing generally refers to injecting a cell and a cell culture medium into a culture vessel or a culture dish having a predetermined volume and culturing the cell and the cell culture for a predetermined time.
Here, in order to efficiently culture the cell, the culture medium should be replaced at a predetermined period. According to the related art, experimenters have automatically replaced the cell culture medium using a pump. However, since the pump and a pump control apparatus occupy a significant space, it may be difficult to simultaneously perform several culture medium replacement operations.
In addition, since an expensive pump and controller are required in the case of a scheme of replacing the culture medium using the pump, it is difficult to use the scheme in a small scale laboratory.
Therefore, the development of an experimentation apparatus or an experimentation device capable of replacing a fixed quantity of culture medium at a low cost has been urgently demanded.